Investment "Logic"

Back on February 27, Ionis announced their fourth quarter and fiscal year 2017 results.  Instead of diving into results, the company started out with talking about its pipeline.  As I have been anticipating, we have some updated information on the PDUFA (and thus the retail approval) for Inotersen, which will be July 6.  At the same time, their EU review has also been accelerated and things continue to go smoothly.  With approval, Ionis will be ready for immediate launch of the drug.  They also appear to be getting close to deciding on a partner to take on the drug, which is a bit of a mix on emotion.  Giving it up means that Ionis will give up revenues, in exchange for all of the sales and marketing efforts, but given where they are in the process, the company should be able to maintain relatively high royalty rates.  Similarly, we also received an update on Volanesorsen, with the FCS therapy going in front of the FDA on May 10.  Again, the p...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. The purpose of this discussion and review is to analyze the trades I made in 2017 - what went bad, what went well, and what's still undecided.  Hopefully we'll be able to glean some lessons from the experiences I've had and use those to become better in 2018 - so let's dig in.  Below are all of the trades I made in the year.  I'm going to try to break things down stock by stock, not trade by trade, but I'll do my best to keep all of this straight. 2017 Trades 2017 was a year of low volatility.  Throughout the entire year the market never pulled back more than 5%, though many individual stocks certainly did.  I did find m...

Ionis Pharmaceuticals had a lot going on last week.  I'll do my best to summarize it all within the earnings analysis to simplify my work.  We'll start with the earnings announcement.  Ionis announced the results from their second quarter operations on Tuesday and provided what has been viewed as a set of mixed results.  Earnings were reported as a loss of nine cents, below analyst consensus of a four cent loss.  Revenues, however, beat expectations of $92.1M, coming in at $104.1M.  Headlines jumped out talking about missing marks and the stock dropped rather significantly - approximately 8% on that day alone.   During the course of the quarter, SPINRAZA, a therapy for spinal muscular atrophy, went commercial and made an impressive first move.  Their partner, Biogen Idec, announced $204M in SPINRAZA sales, as the drug is clearly making inroads for intended patients.  When this was announced, earnings estimates for Ionis were dramaticall...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. The purpose of this discussion and review is to analyze the trades I made in 2016 - what went bad, what went well, and what's still undecided.  Hopefully we'll be able to glean some lessons from the experiences I've had and use those to become better in 2016 - so let's dig in.  Below are all of the trades I made in the year.  I'm going to try to break things down stock by stock, not trade by trade, but I'll do my best to keep all of this straight. 2016 Trades 2016 is probably going to be best described as a year of missed opportunities, despite the lessons I "learned" last year.  On a positive note, I started the year ...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. On November 9, Ionis Pharmaceuticals announced the results for their third quarter, 2016 results.  For the quarter, they posted earnings of $0.06 on earnings of $110.9M.  These results are mixed with analyst expectations with earnings expected to be a loss of $0.02 on earnings of $112.67M.  While the results were mixed, the stock soared off of the earnings announcement and call.  I'll get into that shortly, however I also want to note that cash equivalents were higher than I expected, with $687.8M in reserves, which is down from the $779.2M they had a year ago.  Reserves were expected to go down due to extra expenses in getting th...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. Last Tuesday, Ionis Pharma reported a operating loss of $0.47 per share on revenues of $38.47M for their second quarter results of 2016.  These results were slightly mixed from consensus, with analysts expecting a loss of 52 cents for earnings, on slightly higher revenues of $38.52M.  In addition, cash was at levels over $660M, without including over $85M recently received in this quarter.  Finally, guidance stated everything was well on target with their plans for the year, with expectations that they will see larger amounts of milestone payments in the back half of this year.   Truthfully, that was the highlight of the conference c...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. Last week Ionis Pharmaceuticals announced their first quarter results.  The results were rather uneventful, as they posted a $-0.52 loss on earnings of $36.9M.  This was a two cent miss on earnings, but a $0.7M beat on revenues.  Everything was in line with expectations and cash was still over the $700M mark.  Progress continues on all of their phase 3 drugs and we didn't learn much more about the test that was put on clinical hold by the FDA other than the questions raised were regarding platelet counts. As I've stated, this will continue to be a volatile and beaten down stock.  There's too much political pressure on pricing du...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. Yesterday Ionis Pharmaceuticals posted an update on its 2 Phase 3 studies regarding their anti-sense therapy for TTR.  In short, the FDA put a hold on the start of the study for the FCA version of the therapy (for heart-related TTR), which is being operated by Glaxo-Smith Klein (GSK), while the FAP version (for neurological-related TTR) continues on its normal path.  This news event caused the stock to go down over 13% at one point yesterday before it closed down over 10%.  Today it was down another 2%, presumably related to this news.   Traditionally, an FDA hold is a bad thing for biotech companies as it indicates an issue in a tes...

Notes: Stock Ratings: 1 = buy at current stock prices, 2 = buy on a 5-10% dip in stock price, 3 = sell on a 5-10% increase in stock price, 4 = sell at current stock prices to raise cash.  Ratings are based upon 12-18 month outlook on stock direction and not necessarily related to moves I make due to financial positioning. The purpose of this discussion and review is to analyze the trades I made in 2015 - what went bad, what went well, and what's still undecided.  Hopefully we'll be able to glean some lessons from the experiences I've had and use those to become better in 2016 - so let's dig in.  Below are all of the trades I made this year.  I'm going to try to break things down stock by stock, not trade by trade, but I'll do my best to keep all of this straight. Trades Made in 2015 I'll start with the easiest topic to discuss, which was my "win" with NPS Parmaceuticals (NPSP).  As I went into the year, I was up significantly o...